The thing Satoshi probably would have done, if he hadn't been frightened into the shadows, is integrate a voting mechanism into the client. The bitcoin collective would then steer and shape the currency. I think something like this is in the works now, so Bitcoin should be just fine.
Hey man, I think your on to something... color the fee coins so that only the miner the spender selects can claim the fee. Make mining some type of proof-of-share, the miner with the most colored shares of fees gets awarded the next block...
Lots of holes in it... but kinda a shadow of an idea in there somewhere.